


Babysitting Cassie

by IgnorantArmies



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Baby, Babysitting, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kids, Mild Angst, Other, Spoilers, Uncharted 4, Uncle Sam, life after canon, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-03-21 17:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13746141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IgnorantArmies/pseuds/IgnorantArmies
Summary: Looking after the littlest Drake is a task taken very seriously.





	1. Catapult

**Author's Note:**

> *** If it's not obvious already - this fic contains SPOILERS for the end of Uncharted 4 ***
> 
> Oh, and this fic is in absolutely NO chronological order - just a set of one-shots that appear in the order they occurred to me. 
> 
> Kinda want to make this into a full series where all the peripheral characters end up taking a shot at babysitting Cassie through various stages of her childhood... Suggestions/requests welcome!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is not nearly caffeinated enough to babysit a preschooler...

Sam fidgeted at the front door, listening to the various noises of family life behind it. Little running feet; Nathan’s voice raised in a teasing kind of threat; that big dumb dog of theirs, barking its big dumb head off; Elena yelling at them all to stop fooling around, then giggling as she presumably got caught up in whatever game they were playing.

He knocked again and this time someone heard him. The door whipped open and he was greeted by... the back of Elena’s head as she continued trying to corral her family into some sort of order with feigned seriousness. “Nate, will you just stop? You’re getting her all hyped up. And get the damn dog OFF the couch… Oh, hey Sam!”

“Hey…” But she was already off back down the hall, scooping up various bits of domestic detritus as she went. Sam took a deep breath and followed her in – there was not enough coffee in the world for this, but a promise was a promise…

Elena shot an apologetic smile back at him. “Sorry about the mess, just… step over the piles of laundry. And throw the dog outside if she’s a pain.”

“Is that Sam?” came Nathan’s voice from the kitchen, quickly followed by a smaller, higher voice that made a little twist of affection pull inside Sam’s chest.

“Sammyyyyyyy!”

Nathan was standing at the counter carefully constructing a pretty accurate – if a little wonky - representation of the Parthenon. Out of waffles. His four-year-old Cassie was standing _on top of_  the counter, jiggling around with excitement as she watched her father work. The moment she saw her uncle she made a flying leap into his arms, with no apparent concern that she might not get caught. Sam stumbled with the impact, wrapping his arms around her and grimacing as her teeny hands, sticky with syrup, gripped at his hair.

“Hey, little boots,” he whispered into her neck.

Elena rolled her eyes, “Will you stop encouraging that nickname? My daughter is not a sociopathic Roman emperor.”

“What?” Sam shrugged, jostling Cassie up and down, “It’s not my fault you let this little lunatic run your house. Plus, at last Caligula had style.”

Nathan frowned at his waffle creation and licked syrup off his thumb. “Sam, he made his horse a consul and tried to sleep with his sister,” he muttered scathingly.

“Okay, so no one’s perfect…”

“Look, Sammy! Waffles!” Cassie yelled, temporarily deafening him in one ear. He flinched, nodding obediently. _Nope, not enough coffee in the universe_...

“I see,” he said, sitting her back down on the counter and pointing a finger at the construction. “You’re, uh, missing a column there on the right, Nathan.”

Nathan looked up with mock sternness. “Yeah well, _someone_ keeps stealing my building materials.”

Cassie, with elephant-like stealth, reached around the back of the plate and grabbed a slice of waffle which unfortunately turned out to be a load-bearing support and the whole thing came crashing – well, smooshing – down. Nathan sighed expansively. “An hour, that took me.”

“Which is why we’re not ready yet,” Elena added, whipping a tea towel at Nathan’s butt. He gave a little yelp but took the hint and scooted off towards the bedroom.

“All right, all right, let me just get my pack.” 

“So…” Elena said, half-heartedly trying to scoop up some of the many unwashed dishes covering the kitchen. “We’ll be back by the afternoon. There’s food in the fridge. Try to maybe limit the sugar…?” she nodded significantly at her daughter, who was now lying on her belly on the counter with her face in the pile of waffles, doing a very good imitation of the dog.

Sam nodded, trying to keep a straight face. “Anything else I need to know? She _is_ potty trained, right?”

Elena let out the kind of exasperated sigh that she usually reserved for his brother. “Sam, she’s nearly five. Plus you know when she needs to go because she starts dancing around like her feet are on fire.”

“Ah yeah, Nathan used to do that. Always too busy to stop and pee.”

Elena shot him a strange look. He guessed she forgot that he’d pretty much been his brother’s carer since Nathan was the same age. They stood in silence for a moment, watching Cassie, who was now dangling pieces of waffle over the countertop for the dog to catch.

“Well,” Elena said eventually, “Thanks for today. We appreciate it. Really. It’s nice to have you around more often.”

“Hey, what are uncles for?” He fidgeted, feeling a little hot and awkward under her scrutiny.

“Sammy? Can we play catapult?” Cassie asked suddenly, springing back up and sending the waffle plate spinning.

Elena looked between them with a well-worn expression of suspicion. “What, exactly, does ‘catapult’ involve?”

Sam made hurried shushing gestures towards the kid, “Uhhh, I don’t exactly recall…”

“We take all the cushions off the couch and put them on the floor-“ Cassie explained to her mother, as Sam’s waving became frantic and Elena’s frown deepened.

“And then Sammy lies on his back and I do an aeroplane on his feet, like, on my tummy…” She spread her arms out to the sides and lifted up one leg behind her to demonstrate, but her balance wasn’t great and the counter was slippy with syrup and she pinwheeled for a second before toppling sideways and-

Elena let out a gasp and jolted forwards but Sam was there before her, one safe arm around the little girl’s waist, holding her fast before she got anywhere near the hard tiled floor. A flash of shock and the threat of tears crossed Cassie’s face, but it was soon replaced by a delighted smile when he lifted her up by her leg and held her upside down, studying her as if he'd just pulled a particularly large fish out of a net. 

“And your mother doesn’t need to know about the catapult game,” he told her, flipping her back up the right way and setting her down on the floor. Elena shook her head, beyond the point of bothering to argue.

“Catapult?” Nathan strode back into the kitchen, pulling a fresh t-shirt over his head. “Hey, we used to do that when we were kids, remember? You'd throw me over your head and-”

“Jesus, Nathan,” Sam groaned, face in his hands.

“Your daughter’s a fan, too,” Elena told her husband with a tight smile, jerking her chin at Sam.

Nathan looked from Elena to Sam to Cassie and gave a slow nod. “Ah. Well. She’s got good reflexes, right?”

“Yeah, takes after her uncle,” Sam smirked.

Elena crouched down in front of the kid and dusted crumbs off her face. “No catapult today, okay? You’re meant to be taking it easy. All the TV and snacks you like, how does that sound?”

Cassie gave a happy squeal and scampered off to the living room with the dog bounding after her.

Elena straightened up and watched her go, “Despite evidence to the contrary,” she said to Sam, “she’s getting over a really bad cold and needs to rest.”

“Yeah, she looks… really sick,” Sam nodded seriously.

“Thankfully, she took after me rather than her father when it comes to getting sick,” Elena explained. 

“What the hell does that mean?” Nathan protested, but Sam’s face split into a dangerous smile, knowing  _exactly_ what she meant.

“Right? Like he’s the first person in the world to get a sore throat or a hangover."

“Ohhh hangovers are the worst. And you can’t even be sympathetic because they’re self-inflicted,” Elena bantered, mimicking Nathan in a deep goofy voice, “ _I think I’m gonna die, I think I’ve got alcohol poisoning, I think my brain is leaking out…_ ”

“Wait, this isn’t fair-” Nathan tried, but his wife and brother had already descended into sniggers, leaning on the counter for support, eyes twinkling with shared mischief.

“You ever seen him get a _splinter_?” Sam asked. “Holy shit, ho-oooly shit, the drama…”

Elena was snorting with laughter by now, “I mean sure, he’ll get himself shot, he’ll dislocate something or try to shake off a concussion and he’ll be like ‘ _Ah, I’m fine, lemme just climb this mountain_ ,’ but my God, he stubs his toe and suddenly he’s at death’s door.” 

“You think he’s bad now, imagine him as a _teenager_ ,” Sam said.

“Alright, alright,” Nathan stepped in, arms up in defence. “Enough. ‘Lena? I thought you wanted to get going?” he hinted emphatically, nodding to the door.

Elena wiped tears from her eyes and patted her husband on the shoulder. “Alright, let me just say goodbye to Cassie.”

They followed her into the living room where Cassie had already dragged off all the couch cushions and was making a clumsy arrangement of them on the floor, ready for the inevitable catapult. 

“Where are you guys going, anyway?” Sam asked, eyeing their rucksacks and walking boots. _Were they off on an expedition? Without him? Worse - leaving him to_ babysit _? That wasn’t right at all…_  

“Hiking!” Elena replied brightly. “There’s a great trail just behind the house – we’d normally take Cass too, but she’s still not a hundred per cent and we’d probably end up carrying her half the way.”

“Hiking?!” Sam barked, staring at them both with incredulity. “You mean… Climbing shit… for fun?”

“I believe that’s the official definition,” Elena drawled, ignoring the whole swearing-in-front-of-her-daughter issue.

Nathan grinned, “Hey, gotta stay frosty, right?”

Sam shook his head in disbelief. He’d had enough of scraping his way up mountains and swinging across ravines and scrabbling along ledges to last him a lifetime. In fact, this whole sitting around eating waffles thing was suddenly looking a lot more appealing. He plonked himself down on a cushion and was immediately cannon-balled by a blond bundle of small child, knocking him backwards with a grunt. 

“Alright, well, you kids enjoy yourselves,” he said from the floor. “Cassie and I are _definitely_ not gonna be playing catapult at all today, right, little boots?”

Cassie replied by sitting on his chest and wiggling her little feet in his face. The dog followed her lead, flumping down on his legs and leaving him utterly pinioned.

“Riiiight,” Elena said, herding her husband towards the door, “Good luck with that.” Sam smiled as he listened to them bicker-flirt all the way down the hall and out the front.

“So,” he said, eyeing the kid with a thoughtful expression, “I’m thinking we make a foxhole in the yard and pelt your parents with water balloons when they get back. You down for that?”

Cassie considered it, looking so much like her father for a moment that it almost took Sam’s breath away. “Okay. But catapult first,” she countered.

“Uh uh.  _Coffee_ first,” he said. He wasn’t usually up this early, let alone doing acrobatics with a four-year-old. 

She bounced emphatically on his chest, driving all the wind out of him. “Catapult!” she demanded. _And there's her mother’s side._

“Alright, alright, jeez…” 

He shoved the dog off and raised his legs up in the air, balancing Cassie’s stomach on the soles of his feet as gently as he could. She stretched out her arms, fluffy bed-hair sticking every which way, chubby little legs wobbling behind her - flying.

“You ready?” he asked her. She beamed down at him with such glee that the twisting feeling in his chest spread out into an aching kind of love that he’d never felt for anyone other than Nathan. He remembered playing this game with his brother in the early days of the orphanage and Nathan laughing so much he almost choked. It was well worth getting caught and punished to see him smile like that. They never got many chances to just be kids…

“Come _on_ , Sammy!” Cassie’s voice jolted him back. He gazed at her serious face. Now, _this_ one… this one’s life was gonna be _all_ play if he had anything to do with it.

He took hold of her shoulders and adjusted his aim so she’d flip safely over into the pile of cushions. Nathan was old enough and ugly enough to take care of himself now, but _this one_ – Sam couldn’t bear to imagine anything happening to her. He caught her eye to make sure she really was ready. Her eyes were wide with excitement and pure, complete trust. He melted a little bit inside before breaking into a conspiratorial chuckle and adjusting his grip.

“Okay, kiddo. One, two, three, aaaaand  _catapult_!"


	2. Checkmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe's babysitting plans go astray so she sends a replacement...

“Hey, look, so I’m gonna be a bit late…”

Nate jerked the phone away from his ear as the blast of a horn made him wince. The voice was distant and echoey, as if she was on speakerphone. “Chloe? Are you on a job right now?” 

He heard her swear in a uniquely colourful way and the screech of tires and – was that gunfire?

“Chloe…?!"

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ve got it covered!” she yelled, before the signal began to break up, “… gonna … be there … promise.”

The connection ended and Nate tossed his phone onto the coffee table with a sigh. Elena peered around the kitchen door at him, her mouth full of crackers.

“Was that Chloe?”

“Yeah, she- Wait, are you snacking? We’re meant to be going to dinner, ‘Lena.”

Elena shrugged, “Not ‘til eight.”

Nate rolled his eyes. “Maybe not at all if she’s still driving a getaway car halfway across the city. Why don’t we have any reliable friends?”

She slid down next to him on the couch and passed him a singular cracker, hoarding the rest of the packet in her lap. “Maybe because they’re all thieves and criminals."

“Oh, yeah, right.”

#

At five to seven there was a knock at the door and they exchanged startled looks, having resigned themselves to a night in after hearing nothing more from Chloe.

“Wonders never cease,” Nate muttered as he answered it, preparing for one of Chloe’s charming grins, but waiting on the doorstep was…

“Uh. Nadine. Hi.”

Nadine was all but standing to attention, only the darting of her eyes betraying her nervousness. “Drake,” she answered. “Chloe asked me to…”

“To _babysit_?” He couldn’t help the incredulous tone and regretted it instantly when her eyes narrowed at him. 

“Just until she gets here,” Nadine clarified. _Whenever that might be_.

“Oh.”

Elena appeared in the hallway and, to her credit, didn’t miss a beat. “Nadine! Oh my god, thank you. Come in, let me get you a drink.”

Nadine slipped past a still-dumbstruck Nate and followed Elena into the kitchen, politely waving away offers of beer and wine.

“I don’t drink while I’m working,” Nadine said shortly, like it was obvious.

Even Elena faltered at that. “Uh, it’s really okay. All you need to do is send her to bed at eight-thirty and then you can spend the rest of the evening watching TV.”

After a brief standoff they settled on juice before Elena led her into the living room and began an extensive hunt for the remote, filling the silence with a stream of pre-babysitting prep.

“She can get her own snacks, just make sure she brushes her teeth before bed. Oh, and she’s an expert at bedtime procrastination so don’t let her string it out too long. She’s at that ‘I know everything and adults are dumb’ age, you know?”

Nadine nodded automatically, looking around uneasily for signs of this tiny dictator.

Nate lingered in the doorway for a moment before grabbing his wife’s arm as she passed and pulling her back into the hall. “’Lena, can I talk to you for a second?” he murmured, smiling awkwardly at Nadine who was perched on the sofa looking supremely uncomfortable.

“ _Nadine?_ ” he said emphatically, once they were out of earshot.

“What?” Elena laughed, “She’s responsible. She’s organised. She’s terrifying. Perfect babysitter material. And Chloe said she’d be along later. She just got… held up. Plus,” she said, leaning into his chest, “When did we last get to go out just the two of us?”

He softened a little, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her in tighter. “Yeah but… Shouldn’t we check that Cassie’s all right with this? I mean she’s only met her a few times.” 

“She’ll be fine. I’m more worried about Nadine…” Elena said with a smirk, pushing herself up onto tip toes to snatch a fleeting kiss before heading back towards the living room.

But Cassie had beaten them to it and was sitting opposite Nadine with all the look of a hardened interrogator. Even at seven-years-old, with a shock of white-blonde hair and Star Wars pyjamas, she had a stare that could cut through ice. 

“You’re Chloe’s girlfriend,” the girl said. Nadine nodded.

“And you work with my uncle?” Affirmative.

“But... didn't you try to kill my dad that one time?"

Nate made a spluttering noise and Elena hissed “Cassie!” but Nadine reacted with an amused smile.

“Who told you that?” Nate asked his daughter in a low tone. 

Cassie tossed her hair and glanced up at him, shrugging. “I heard Chloe and Sam joking about it. But it’s true, right? You used to be enemies?”

“And now we’re friends,” Elena cut in, with the tone of a mother who is not going to put up with much more of a certain someone’s smart mouth.

Nadine looked down at the word ‘friends’ but her smile remained there, faintly. 

“Water under the bridge,” she said, after a pause, catching Cassie’s eye and holding it. “Since then we’ve been more in the business of saving each another’s lives.”

Cassie watched her for a moment before giving a singular nod, apparently making a decision. “So. Sam said you’re like a master of Kung Fu or something. Can you teach me?”

Nadine burst out laughing at that and Elena rolled her eyes. “No Kung Fu, please. Or learning how to strip a field weapon or how to pick locks – yes, I’ve already spoken to Chloe about that,” she said, eyeing her daughter knowingly.

“How about… advanced military tactics?” Nadine suggested, and Cassie’s eyes brightened. Elena raised an eyebrow. Nate dragged his hands over his face in resignation.

“I really don’t think-” he started but Nadine cut him off with a raised hand. 

“Do you have a chess set?” she asked. Cassie nodded, suddenly the attentive pupil, and scuttled off to get the board from her room.

“Okaaaay then. You know, I think you guys are gonna be just fine,” Elena grinned. “Nate? We’d better get going if we’re gonna make that reservation. Nadine, just call us if you need anything. We won’t be too late. And _thank you_.”

Elena nudged her husband in the ribs. “Yeah,” he muttered, “Thanks.” 

Nadine gave him a sarcastic salute and, as usual, he couldn’t work out whether her manner was designed to confuse, mock, or scare him. Or maybe all three.

Nate followed her out, nodding dumbly, wondering what the hell kind of insurrection he was going to come home to. 

“I think they’re a good match,” Elena said, once they were on their way to the restaurant, eyeing him sideways for his reaction, a mischievous smile at the edges of her lips.

Nate gave her a level look. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

#

It was past midnight when they arrived back at the house and they paused under the porch light, arms wrapped around each other, swaying a little with the warmth of the alcohol running in their veins.

Elena let out a long sigh, leaning against his shoulder, and he murmured kisses into her hair. “Do we have to go back in?” he moaned.

“You wanna run away with me?” she said, with a tired, happy smile.

“Just for a little while.” 

“Mmmm no can do, cowboy. A kid is for life, not just for Christmas.” 

Nate paused momentarily in his kisses and Elena realised what she’d just said. To Nate. The abandoned half- _orphan_. “Shit. I’m sorry- I didn’t mean.”

He chuckled and pulled her closer. “Shhh. It's not like I'm Oliver Twist. It’s fine.”

She nuzzled up against his chin in apology and slid her hands into the waistband of his jeans. “Make it up to you?" 

He grinned. “Definitely.”

They half-fell through the front door, stifling tipsy giggles and shushing each other in stage whispers. Most of the lights were off aside from a few lamps in the living room where they found Chloe with her feet up on the coffee table, an empty bottle of wine beside her and a lap full of snacks.

“Heyyyy,” she whispered, waving for them to keep the noise down.

“You made it,” Nate said.

“Yeah,” Chloe sighed, rolling her neck from side to side, "Just about." She looked a little rough around the edges - there were rips in her jacket and a bruise developing on her jaw. The telltale glimmer of adrenaline in her eyes was half-dulled with alcohol. Tough night, Nate guessed. It was times like this that he didn't miss his old life one bit.

“Sorry about tonight," she said. "Should have been a simple wheelman job but the guy failed to mention that the bloody-”

Nate held up a hand. “Nope, nope. Don’t need to know. So long as you’re okay.”

“You found the wine alright?” Elena smirked. “Nadine wouldn’t touch it.” 

Chloe rolled her eyes affectionately. “Ah. Policy, y’know?”

“How’d she get on?” Nate asked, half-cringing at the anticipated reply.

Chloe dissolved into sniggers and hoisted herself up off the sofa, about the same level of amiable drunk as the other two. She crooked her finger in a theatrical ‘follow me’ gesture and tiptoed down the corridor. 

“So, I rocked up about nine-thirty,” she whispered, “And according to Cassie she’d learned how to get to checkmate in six moves, beat up the monster in her closet and throw a fully grown man over her shoulder.” 

Elena stifled a laugh. Nate just groaned.

"Then they played a best-of-nine championship of rock, paper, scissors for bedtime negotiations and… Nadine lost.” 

“Oh god, what was the forfeit?” Elena asked, knowing her daughter all too well.

Chloe’s eyes sparkled in the dim light. “For Nadine to read her three chapters of _Harry Potter_ and do all the voices.”

“And did she?”

“Yes. Terribly.” 

“She still in there?” said Nate, wondering how long all of this had gone on and when the hell his kid had actually gone to sleep.

Chloe put a finger to her lips. “I checked on them about an hour ago and, well, look…” She pushed open the door to Cassie’s room and the light from the hall fell across the bed. Cassie was curled up in her usual position – sideways on the pillow with all the covers rucked up at the end. Nadine was sitting on the floor, head resting on the mattress beside her, one arm circling around Cassie, her fingers in the girl's hair, as if she'd been stroking her. And both of them were fast asleep. 

Chloe let out a hissing giggle and pulled the door closed as quietly as possible.

“Ha. Cute,” Nate admitted grudgingly.

“You wanna stay the night?” Elena asked, “It’s late. And you’ve drunk way too much to be driving.”

“Well that depends,” Chloe said coyly. “You got any more wine?”

Elena returned her sly smile and slid an arm through Chloe’s as they headed back to the kitchen, leaving Nate alone in the hall, wondering how the hell he'd ended up outnumbered four to one in his own damn house. And what happened to Elena's plan to 'make it up to him'...

 _Damnit_.

“Hey Nate,” Elena called back, “Can you make up the spare room?”

"Aw, now?"

"Yes now!"

He sighed as he heard the pop of a cork from the kitchen. Tomorrow promised a uniquely awful kind of hangover when combined with the presence of the four female furies currently in residence.

He pulled a stack of clean sheets out of the airing cupboard and shoved open the spare room door. “Yes, ma’am.”


	3. Swingin' on a Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parenting is HARD. Elena is hella tired. Nate is a cinnamon roll.

Why hadn't anyone told her it was going to be this hard?

_Why won’t she stop crying? Why won’t she **sleep**?_

They’d only been back home a few weeks but it felt like a lifetime; a million steep learning curves. This tiny little creature that she loved with a fierce, aching passion had taken over her world but no matter what she did, Elena felt like she was constantly doing it wrong.

Nate was a rock. His voice was always calm and steady; his touch was always gentle and loving; and the way he looked at Cassie... She didn't believe she could have loved him any more than she already did but hoo boy was she wrong. He was... unflappable, even when Elena was flipping between tears of frustration and tears of joy within the space of a few minutes. He cooked and cleaned and changed diapers and fielded phone calls from well-wishers when Elena couldn’t face telling her birth story over and over again. It was almost _annoying_ how well he was adapting to parenthood.

Elena, on the other hand, felt like she'd had a tonne of bricks dropped on top of her. The birth hadn't exactly been straightforward and no one had warned her just how much physical recovery was gonna be involved - made almost impossible by the lack of sleep and haywire hormones and the constant,  _constant_ demands of motherhood. 

And now Cassie had colic, or wind, or something, and nursing was proving to be the hardest thing Elena had ever attempted in her life, and no matter how lucky she felt and how happy she was, she couldn’t help feeling like a failure because the baby would just _not stop crying_ and now neither could she.

“It’s normal,” Nate told her, sitting on the edge of the bed, Cassie draped across one arm and the laptop on his knees, Googling symptoms and cures and feeding techniques. “She’s just getting used to the world. It’ll pass.”

Elena sniffed into her pyjama sleeves, watching Cassie’s little face contort with pain as she wailed. “I just don’t know what to do,” Elena said in a tiny voice. “Should I try feeding her again?” The thought made her toes curl. Her boobs were so sore even toweling after a shower felt like her skin was being ripped off.

Nate shifted Cassie onto his shoulder and got up, bouncing her gently up and down as he paced around the bedroom. “She doesn’t look hungry. Just… uncomfortable. Probably needs a big ol' fart,” he grinned.

_How is he such a natural at this? And why aren’t I?_

A fresh flood of tears came surging out of her. “I’m sorry.”

Nate’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What the hell for?”

“I’m such a mess.”

“You gave birth, like, three weeks ago, ‘Lena. You’re supposed to be a mess. It's okay."

Cassie seemed to disagree, letting out a piercing squeal that made Elena cry harder. _It's not fair that she's in pain. She's so little. Why can't I make it better?_  Nate shushed into Cassie's ear, pressing his lips against her soft little head. His hands looked huge wrapped around the baby, one cradling Cassie's head, the other patting her butt, and Elena wished she could shrink down to the same size and just melt into his chest and… _God, I’m tired._ The yawn almost cracked her jaw. 

He frowned down at her. “You need a nap. In fact, you’re having one right now, c'mon.” He reached over and laid a hand on her cheek. Elena leant into his cool palm gratefully but he withdrew it sharply and replaced it on her forehead. “Jesus, ‘Lena, you’re burning up.”

She looked up blearily. She felt like warmed up shit, but that was another new normal she assumed she’d just have to get used to. “I’m fine…” she murmured.

“No, you’re not,” he said firmly, and made her lie back down, arranging pillows around her and fussing incessantly until she waved him away. He stood over the bed, chewing on his bottom lip with concern.

“I’m calling the doctor.”

“Nate-”

“Just… Stop being a superhero for one second, okay?”

Cassie gave a throaty belch and nuzzled into Nate’s neck, suddenly content.

“See? She just needed to pass a little gas,” he smirked. “All better.”

Tears prickled at Elena’s eyes once more. “I really suck at this, don't I?”

The sadness on Nate’s face made her want to curl up and disappear. She hated being out of control. Hated being weak. _Hated_ not doing things right. “’Lena…” His voice was so gentle it made her heart ache. “You’re sick. You need to rest, okay? Please. Do this for me. For us. Just sleep.”

She tried to mumble a counter-argument but his free hand was stroking her hair and the weight of him sitting on the edge of the bed was so comforting that she thought maybe it really _would_ be okay if she just closed her eyes for a minute or two…

#

He woke her with whispers and kisses when the doctor called back, and a brief rollcall of her various aches and pains produced a diagnosis of mastitis. _Great, just what I need_. She'd read up about it before and had a decent idea of what to expect: fever, infection, antibiotics, a general feeling of shittiness, a fussy-ass baby, but it would pass, just like Nate said. Cassie still hadn’t napped but at least she wasn’t crying any more, and Elena gritted her teeth through a feed while Nate went to pick up her prescription.

“Hey you,” Elena said, gazing down at Cassie’s little blue-green eyes, so much like her father’s already.

Cassie stared back up at her as if she was fixing her mother at the centre of her world. Elena’s entire body tingled with oxytocin – pure, unadulterated endorphins that made all the discomfort and anxiety fade into nothingness, replaced by a glorious, loved-up sleepiness. Maybe it wasn’t so hard. Maybe she _could_ do this. One day at a time...

“You have no idea how loved you are,” Elena whispered, though wondered if perhaps Cassie really did know - on some molecular level - because the baby wrapped her teeny fingers around Elena’s thumb and held on as if her life depended on it.

#

When Nate came back Elena was drifting off. Cassie lay on her chest, drooling into Elena's cleavage and chewing furiously on her little fist.

He carefully swapped the baby for a bag of medication and a glass of water, checking Elena's temperature again with a troubled grimace.

“Still no nap?” he asked, holding Cassie at arm’s length and peering at her suspiciously. “Are you kidding me, kiddo?”

Elena shook her head wearily. “No but she’s full of milk, at least.”

Nate wrinkled his nose. “She’s got a diaper-full, too.”

Elena tried to push herself up and out of bed, “Let me-“

“Nuh uh,” Nate replied, pressing her back against the pillow with one firm hand. “Stay put. I’m on duty. Take your drugs. Sleep.”

She didn’t even bother to fight it this time. The bed was sucking her in like a black hole and the moment she lay her head back down she was out.

#

The familiar screech of colic came scything through her dreams. She was up and half out of bed before she was even properly awake, some innate maternal instinct tying a thread between her and the baby. She wanted to take all Cassie’s pain away, take it all on herself – such a tiny little thing should not be suffering this much when she’d only been in the world a few short weeks. It made her want to punch something. Or start bawling herself. _Seriously,_ w _hen are we gonna stop with all the crying, for chrissakes?_

Elena swayed on the edge of the mattress, dizzy with fever. It was dark out, and she had no idea how long she’d been asleep. She felt cold and hot at the same time, and wrapped a thin blanket around her as she shuffled out into the hallway.

The crying reached a new peak, filling the house, and for a moment Elena couldn’t work out where the noise was coming from. _And where the hell is Nate?_

He must be with Cassie. Of course he was. Where else would he be? Unless he’d fallen asleep, too – on the couch, maybe – and Cassie was lying in her bouncer all alone, wailing for someone to come and help her…

Elena headed for the living room, teetering on the edge of panic, but as she reached the door the crying stuttered and stopped, replaced by a low rumbling voice, softer than cotton wool, and… _singing_?

“[Would you like to swing on a star](https://youtu.be/nWKXU0ApF08)? Carry moonbeams home in a jar? And be better off than you are…?”

A smile crept across Elena’s face as she leaned on the doorframe. Nate was almost whispering the words, the tiredness in his voice making them come out croaky. Elena peered around the door to see him standing in middle of the darkened room, Cassie on his shoulder, bobbing up and down like a ship in a harbour.

“…Or would you rather be a pig?” Nate asked the baby, mock-seriously. Cassie looked back up at him with those wide, innocent little eyes and a grin of affection creased Nate's face.

Elena pressed her lips together to stifle a laugh. He hadn’t seen her yet and she hadn’t heard this song since she was a kid; had no idea he even knew it. Nate only sang in the shower, or when he was very, very drunk, but he had a good enough voice, and the fact that Cassie was listening attentively seemed to give him confidence. The next verse came out stronger:

“A pig is an animal with dirt on his face. His shoes are a terrible disgrace. He’s got no manners when he eats his food. He’s fat and lazy and extremely rude. But if you don’t care a feather or a fig…” Nate paused dramatically, and turned a slow, careful pirouette for effect, “You may grow up to be a pig.”

Cassie burped in response, eliciting a low chuckle from her father. “Atta girl,” he said, bumping noses with her.

“Orrrrrr would you like to swing on a star?” he reprised, as Elena slipped through the doorway and wrapped her arms around him from behind. He startled slightly but didn’t stop his little dance - instead turned it into a sway from side to side rather than the bouncing he’d been doing before. Elena rested her cheek against his back and listened to his song through his ribcage.

“Carry moonbeams home in a jar? And be better off than you are…?” His voice was getting quieter and quieter the sleepier Cassie became. "You could be swingin' on a star."

Elena slid her hands up from his waist until she could reach Cassie and started drawing gentle circles on the baby's back.

“And all the monkeys aren’t in the zoo,” Nate continued, barely whispering now, “Every day you see quite a few. So you see, it’s all up to you… You could be better than you are…”

“You could be swingin’ on a star,” Elena finished.

They both peeked down at the bundle in Nate’s arms. Cassie’s little face was composed in the perfect, button-cuteness of newborn sleep.

“Finally,” Nate sighed, stretching out his back with a series of painful-sounding cracks. “Did you get much sleep?”

“More than you,” Elena replied, leaning against him once more. “Thank you.” He was still swaying gently and the movement was almost lulling her back to sleep standing up. "How come you're not freaking out about all of this," she asked him quietly.

"About what?"

"About... parenthood. Don't you find it... overwhelming sometimes?" The thought that it might just be her that felt this way left a cold feeling in her chest.

He looked over his shoulder at her like she was insane. "Are you kidding? I'm terrified. But this is my job now,” he said, nudging her with his shoulder until she turned her face up to his, “Looking after you. Both of you. Okay? I’m not going anywhere. So let me help.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, accepting the gentle admonishment. She felt him lean down towards her and then the warmth of his lips were on hers. She breathed the smell of him in for a second before breaking off suddenly.

“Um, Nate. What _was_ that? The song?”

He laughed sheepishly. “Swingin’ on a star? Sam used to sing it to me when I couldn’t sleep, back at Saint Francis’.”

Elena made an incredulous face. “Sam? Singing?”

“Ohhh yes.”

“I’m gonna need evidence for that at some point.”

"I'm sure that could be arranged. Or bribed. Maybe threatened."

“Isn’t there a verse about a fish?”

“Delish,” Nate replied.

Elena nodded. “Thought so.”

There was a comfortable, swaying silence before Cassie made a little gurgling noise.

“Nate?”

“Yeah?”

“She just barfed all down your back.”

“Oh. Uh. Better out than in?”

“And she’s awake again.

“ _Goddamnit_.”

Elena let out a quiet little laugh, equal parts tiredness and happiness.

They could do this. Hell, they’d saved the world more than once. One colicky little squirt was going to be a cakewalk.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so technically this isn't 'babysitting' because, well, they're her parents. But still. I felt like it needed to exist. So here it is. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Also - I have a random headcanon that the Drakes are secretly massive Sinatra fans (especially Sam), hence the [song reference](https://youtu.be/nWKXU0ApF08). 
> 
> BONUS: If you've never seen Hudson Hawk (possibly the most bizarre film ever to star a singing, dancing Bruce Willis) then please, for the love of all that's shiny, [watch this and weep](https://youtu.be/D8KvM3vZo0w).


	4. Bucket List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's injured. Chloe's in charge. Cassie is a treasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a comment/request on Chapter 2 involving Chloe's potentially controversial babysitting techniques. Somewhere along the way it turned kinda serious. Angsty/fluff ahoy!

Every second she waited was a second too long. She should have called. But that would have been worse. Better to do it in person. Even if it was the middle of the night. At least she’d had the foresight to strip off her blood-soaked shirt and change in the car. She shivered at the memory.

_Oh my god, so much blood._

She knocked again, more urgently this time, and stuffed her shaking hands into her pockets.

Nate answered the door, fuzzy with sleep, but gave a little grin of surprise when he saw her standing there.

“Chloe! What’re you-”

His face fell when he saw her expression. It was all she could do to get the words out before her throat closed up.

“Nate, it’s Sam.”

#

“Stabbed?” Elena repeated in a whisper.

“They jumped him right after the handover,” Chloe explained. “Guess the buyer wanted the artefact _and_ the money.”

Nate held onto Chloe’s arm like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Elena had his other hand clenched tight between her own. They huddled in the hallway, keeping their voices low to make sure they didn’t wake up Cassie.

_Cassie. Who’s going to tell her?_

“He managed to get back to the car and I got us the hell out of there but-” She stopped to swallow the lump in her throat.

“How bad?” Nate asked. He was clearly trying to keep his shit together but the anguish in his eyes made her look away.

She gave a pathetic kind of shrug. The not knowing was like torture, she knew. “Sully’s with him. I came straight to you,” Chloe told them, forcing her voice to stay level. She shook her head, “A black market doctor wasn’t gonna cut it. He needs surgery. They should be at the hospital by now.”

“We need to go,” Nate said, grabbing his keys and half-stumbling through the door.

Elena stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “What about Cassie? We can’t let her see him like that.”

“I’ll watch her,” Chloe said instantly. The others nodded silently back at her, eyes full of water. “Just keep me updated.”

And then they were gone.

#

Chloe stood in the kitchen with her hands wrapped around a scalding cup of coffee. There were still a few hours before dawn and Cassie hadn’t stirred.

_How the hell do I tell her? Or do I not say anything at all? Just... wait for her parents to get back and then-_

But what if it was bad news? What if…? She couldn’t even comprehend what the worst case scenario would do to the kid, or Nate, for that matter. She leaned against the doorframe, willing her phone to buzz - for a message, for a sign that everything was going to be all right - but Nate and Elena would still be driving, Sully would be arguing with hospital administrators about Sam’s lack of insurance, and Sam…

He’d been barely conscious when she’d left him, lying across the backseat of the getaway, hands pressed tight against his stomach, blood slicked all the way up his forearms, face pale and taut with pain. She’d yelled at him all the way to Sully’s place, alternately threatening, begging, and cracking jokes to keep him awake. And Sully had taken one look at Sam before all but pulling her out of the driver’s seat. “He needs a goddamn hospital,” he snapped, throwing her the keys to his own car. “Get Nate. And quick.”

And he’d left her there, shivering in the street, watching the tail lights screech around the corner.

Back in Nate’s kitchen, her stomach clenched with nausea as she tried to flood it with coffee. She watched the clock and waited for Cassie to wake up.

#

**Elena to Chloe, 5:34am:**

_[They're giving him a bunch of scans. Trying to stabilise. Lost a lot of blood.]_

Chloe stared at the phone screen, heart in her throat. Three sentences was not enough, but she knew they must be going through much worse than her right now. _He’s alive, at least._

She had no idea what to write back: 

 _\- Arsehole ruined my upholstery_?

 _\- Thoughts and prayers_?

 _\- I'm so sorry, I should have been there - it's all my fault_?

There were no words that fitted. And selfishly, perhaps, all she could think of was how the hell she was going to do explain all this to a six-year-old.

 _[What do I tell Cassie?]_ she wrote, at last.

There was a long delay before the response came through. She imagined Elena and Nate and Sully bickering over the obtuse eight-word reply:

_[Keep it simple. We'll update when we can.]_

She tossed her phone onto the counter with a sigh. She’d never been any good at waiting.

#

**Sully to Chloe, 6:09am:**

_[Kid's got internal bleeding but no major organs damaged, they think. Surgery scheduled. Gonna take a few hours. Sit tight.]_

**Chloe to Sully, 6:10am:**

_[Will do. Look after them all, Sully. Wish I could be there.]_

**Sully to Chloe, 6:12am:**

_[You're doing an important job. N & E want you to know they're grateful. And Sam's a strong stubborn sonofabitch. He'll hold on out of spite if nothing else.]_

**Chloe to Sully: 6:12am:**

_[He'd bloody well better.]_

#

6:44am.

_Pancakes. Kids frickin’ love pancakes._

Chloe hunted through the kitchen cupboards for ingredients. She’d maxed out her tolerance for coffee, let the dog out for a piss, put on a load of dirty laundry she found in the utility room and unstacked the dishwasher but Cassie was still asleep. She must take after Nate, Chloe thought – his lazy arse could sleep in past noon given the chance.

She’d peeked into Cassie’s room at around six but the kid was out like a light. Chloe had sat beside the bed for a moment, wrapped in the warm, still darkness of the sleep-filled room and let the shock wash over her; silent, hot, pouring tears that soaked the neck of her t-shirt and left her gasping. And then she was done. She swallowed it down and wiped her face and calmed her breathing and crept back out to the kitchen to make breakfast like a goddamn responsible adult.

The smell of frying batter did the trick and Cassie’s little feet came padding through from the hall. She paused in the doorway when she saw Chloe and not one of her parents at the stove, but hunger seemed to override her curiosity and she hopped up onto a stool and dragged the plate in front of her with a grin.

“Are these for me?”

“Yup.”

“Cool.”

Vicky came to greet her favourite human with a nudge of wet nose against Cassie’s bare feet as they dangled happily from the stool. Chloe ladled another scoop of batter into the pan.

“I’m gonna hang out with you for a bit,” she said, keeping her eyes on the stove instead of having to look at Cassie’s face. “Your mum and dad had to go out.”

She saw Cassie shrug in her peripheral vision. As the kid of a pair of adventuring treasure hunters she must be used to a non-standard routine.

And it would have been so easy to leave it at that. Cassie didn’t suspect anything and she could just wait until Elena got back – she was always so much better at this sort of thing – but she couldn’t just pretend things were fine when Sam might be bleeding out right this moment and- _For god’s sake don’t even think that_...

Chloe cleared her throat. “Cass? I need to tell you something.”

Cassie reluctantly shifted her attention from her plate to Chloe and a look of cautious anxiety crossed her features.

_Shit. It must be written all over my face._

“There was… an emergency.”

Cassie swallowed. Nodded once. Her little face turned tough all of a sudden, ready for whatever Chloe was about to say. Chloe felt a tug of admiration in her chest for the kid.

“Your uncle Sam’s in the hospital.”

As if on cue, the dog whined from underneath the counter. Cassie reached down to scratch Vicky’s head absently. “Is he okay?” she asked, in a little voice.

_Keep it simple. Don’t lie to her, whatever you do. She deserves better than that._

“We don't know.”

Another stoic nod. “Can we go see him?”

Chloe turned off the stove and rested her elbows on the countertop, leaning down so her face was level with Cassie’s. “Soon. I hope. Your parents are there now. They’re going to message me as soon as they know how he’s doing.”

Cassie glanced at Chloe’s phone distrustfully for a second before pushing her plate away.

“Aren’t you hungry? I can make you something else-”

But Cassie had already climbed down off her stool and skittered off back to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Chloe lowered her face into her hands and bit her cheeks to stop herself from crying again.

_I’m not cut out for this._

She dragged her phone towards her and stabbed in her passcode, even though she could already see she had no new messages.

She thumbed a text to both Elena and Sully in a matter of seconds:

_[Any news? Cassie's awake.]_

The ding of a response made her jump, despite the fact she was waiting for it. It was Elena:

_[Complications. He's stable now but it's been a rough few hours. Not out of the woods yet. Tell Cassie we love her. And thanks for being there, Chloe. Don't know what we'd do without you.]_

Well that certainly didn’t help with the whole not crying thing. _Thanks Elena._ Chloe choked out a sob and stifled it with her sleeve. _He’s stable. Stable is good. Now if he could just get the hell out of those woods…_

#

“Cass?”

Chloe knocked gently at Cassie’s bedroom door before pushing it open slowly. She knew she had no right to intrude on the kid’s space, especially when she was trying to process all of this crap in her own little six-year-old way.

She’d expected to find her in a heap, snot-nosed and red-faced, but Cassie was sitting at her desk, bent over a piece of paper – a furious kind of concentration on her face.

“What’re you up to?”

Cassie didn’t look up but slid over a brightly-coloured drawing, whipped a fresh sheet of paper off her sketch pad and returned to her work. Chloe took the picture and sank down onto the kid’s bed.

‘The Family Drake’ it said at the top. Beneath were a bunch of stick figures with varying details to differentiate them – a central trio that was clearly Nate, Elena and Cassie; to the left, a pair of women that could only be Chloe and Nadine, arm in arm; and on the right, two men, one of them with a moustache and a cigar ( _hey there, Sully old pal_ ), and another, sporting a number of squiggly tattoos, his arms, legs and head covered in bandages. Hearts and stars and exes for kisses surrounded the family.

Chloe smiled weakly. The lump in her throat was becoming unbearable. “Hey,” she said, passing the picture back. “You forgot Vicky.”

Cassie blinked for a moment, then grabbed a yellow pencil and got to work scribbling a vaguely dog-shaped figure, complete with swishy tail and dangly ears.

“Perfect,” Chloe said quietly. “And what’s this?” She pointed to Cassie’s next project – a list of some sort, written in bright red pen.

“I’m not finished yet,” Cassie replied, curling her arm around the paper.

“Okay…” Chloe backed off. “Anything I can do to help? I’m no good at drawing but I can colour in pretty well.”

Cassie barely looked up but gestured to a rucksack on the floor by the bed. “I started packing. Can you put in some snacks, too? Sammy likes Oreos best. And spicy Cheetos. But I don’t know if we have any.”

Chloe picked up the rucksack and riffled through it carefully. A fresh pair of pyjamas, a little cuddly rabbit, a kids' book about the Egyptians, and Cassie’s purple toothbrush.

“You going somewhere?” she asked.

Cassie fixed her with a long-suffering expression of ‘duh’. “We’re going to see him soon, you said.”

“Right. As soon as we can, okay? So, what else do we need?”

Cassie folded up her list and tucked it into the front pocket of the rucksack along with the pen. She rested her chin on her fists, deep in thought.

“What does Sammy like best?” Cassie asked. 

Chloe looked up at the ceiling for inspiration. _Cigarettes and scotch and women who laugh at his terrible puns. But none of those are appropriate for a little girl’s rucksack…_

“A map!” Cassie cried, leaping up from her chair. “We need a map to get to the hospital.”

Before Chloe could mention GPS or GoogleMaps Cassie streaked past her and headed into the living room where she started dragging out boxes from the bottom of the bookcase. “Dad keeps _all_ his adventure stuff in here.”

Chloe couldn’t resist a little smirk. _Adventure stuff. I bet that’s what he calls it, too. He’s such a big kid. No wonder she adores him._

Cassie pulled out a stack of maps and journals from the box and made an impressive mess of the living room floor before she found the one she wanted. “It’s got the whole world on it,” she declared, passing the map to Chloe who obediently tucked it into the rucksack.

“That’ll be useful,” Chloe said, getting the hang of this game at last. “Now, how are we gonna get there?”

Cassie glanced out the window at the ocean on her doorstep. “Boat?”

Chloe shook her head. “Nah, the hospital’s too far inland.

Cassie considered this. “Sully’s plane?”

“I can’t fly, can you?”

The girl looked downcast for a moment. “No, but he said he’d teach me when I’m older.”

Chloe gave a theatrical sigh, as if she too was out of options, and then clicked her tongue thoughtfully.

“Hey kid, have you ever driven a car?”

Cassie looked somewhere between appalled and delighted, “I’m only six!”

“Bah, never too early to learn. Come on, you can sit on my lap.”

#

They drove a slow, careful figure of eight on the beach, Cassie was barely able to see over the dash but gripped the wheel in both hands, eyes about as wide as hubcaps. Chloe handled the pedals – the kid’s feet didn’t even reach the floor – and let Cassie experiment with every single knob and switch she could find. At one point they had the wipers and lights at full blast, hazard lights flashing, radio on, and A/C at blizzard levels. It was a small price to pay for the sheer glee on the girl’s face.

Chloe eased on the brake and clapped her hands together. “Right, I think you’ve got the hang of this – ready to go solo?”

“Really?!”

“Ha. No.”

“Oh. Just one more try together then?”

Chloe grinned down at the little puppy dog eyes doing a number on her better judgement. It was almost impossible to say no to that face.

She was about to shift back into drive when her phone pinged and both of them tensed.

“What does it say?” Cassie asked, but Chloe’s clumsy, anxious fingers typed in the passcode wrong twice before she managed to get the message open.

It was Sully:

_[Kid's out of theatre. Groggy as hell but swearing like a sailor already. They want to keep him in a couple nights for observation but our boy's gonna be just fine. Can't keep a good Drake down!]_

It took enormous self-restraint for Chloe not to swear in relief. She read an abridged version out loud to Cassie who bounced up and down on her lap and honked the horn excitedly. “Can we go see him now? Let’s go!”

“Hang on, hang on…”

 _[Thank fuck for that. Okay to visit yet?]_ she typed.

The reply zipped back within a minute:

_[Sure thing. Though he might not stay awake much longer. He's really been through the wringer. Nate says don't let Cassie get her hopes up too high.]_

Chloe hugged the little girl to her chest for a moment before planting a kiss in her hair. “Okay, kiddo. Let’s finish packing and we’re outta here. But I’m driving, all right.”

#

Chloe glanced in the rearview mirror as she drove to see Cassie hunched over her lap, scribbling on a piece of paper.

“That for Sam?” she asked. The girl nodded. “What is it?”

Cassie didn’t look up. “It’s a list.”

“What kind of list?”

“A to-do list,” the girl answered hesitantly. “A… bucket list.”

Chloe’s eyes widened. “You know what a bucket list is?”

“It’s… things you need to do before…” Cassie swallowed thickly and her eyes flickered up to catch Chloe’s gaze in the mirror. “Before you can die.”

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Sully told me."

_Ah, Sully. Constantly contradicting his claims that he's 'too old for this shit'._

Chloe nodded slowly, the pure childish logic pulling at her heart. “So... Sam can’t die until he’s done everything on your list?”

Cassie nodded. “Do you think… Is that okay?”

“I think it’s just what he needs,” Chloe answered firmly, feeling a warm rush of affection at the grateful smile Cassie shot her.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Chloe said quietly, after a short silence – more for her own benefit than the kid’s.

#

They found Sully and Elena drinking coffee in a waiting room, the circles under their eyes almost purple with worry and tiredness. Cassie launched herself at her mother, clinging onto her waist with mini-superhuman strength. Elena made a show of staggering about before scooping her daughter up into a proper hug. Cassie buried her face into Elena’s neck, a soft snivelling noise slowly turning into sobs, and Chloe realised with a jolt of heartache that this was the first time the kid had properly let out all that pent-up grief. Elena’s face broke too, and before she even thought about it Chloe had crossed the room to gather them both up into a hug, rubbing Elena’s back and all but squashing Cassie between them.

Sully watched from a distance, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched, a line of moisture on the lower lids of his eyes.

“Thank you,” Elena whispered in Chloe’s ear.

“I really didn’t do much,” Chloe said haltingly. “She’s a great kid.”

“Yeah she is, c’mere you little bilge rat,” Sully growled as Cassie slid out of the hug and wiped her face roughly on her sleeve, as if annoyed at her own tears. She flashed a brilliant smile at the old man and affectionately punched him in the stomach. Sully feigned a killing blow and fell back onto a chair, at which point Cassie took full advantage and leapt into his lap to lay a proper hug on him.

“Is Nate with him?” Chloe asked Elena in an undertone, while Cassie was distracted.

Elena nodded. “Been in there all night. Would have followed them into surgery if they’d let him.”

_Yep, that sounds like Nate._

Chloe suddenly remembered the shopping bags in her hands and passed them over to Elena. “Oh, I brought you all a change of clothes and some food. Thought you could use it.”

Elena's eyes softened and she squeezed Chloe's arm in thanks. 

“Chloe let me drive,” Cassie suddenly announced to the room at large. There was a tangible silence, then Elena cleared her throat in an accusatory way that only a mother can.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, uh, your car might have a bit more beach in it than usual,” Chloe told Sully with a cringe.

“So can we see Sammy yet?” Cassie asked, gathering up her rucksack and bouncing on the balls of her feet impatiently.

Elena gave her a sorry smile, “He’s sleeping, honey. He needs a lot of rest right now.”

“Pleeeease?” And the tears threatened to overflow once more.

Elena sighed, the stress of the past few hours carving lines into her face. “We can check, okay?” she said softly, crouching down to Cassie’s level. “But if he’s asleep we can’t wake him up.”

“Okay,” Cassie said solemnly. “But I’m not leaving until he wakes up.”

She stared out the three adults until they all nodded, and the little troupe headed out into the corridor to Sam’s room.

#

He looked like shit. Worse than shit. Like death. His skin was almost grey and his features were tight, as if the pain had frozen them like that.

Chloe peered through the little window in the door. Sam lay with his head turned towards the window, an IV snaking out of his hand and a hospital-issue nightshirt covering whatever mess lay beneath. The image of him in the backseat of her car replaced Chloe’s vision for a moment: pupils dilated with shock, slathered in his own blood, mouth opening and shutting with no sound coming out except a hoarse croak of agony and panic. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head to get rid of it. _He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay._

Elena put a hand on her arm, craning to see from behind her. “Is he awake?”

“I don’t think so-” But then he shifted and coughed weakly. As if he could feel he was being watched, Sam rolled his head around and focused on the faces at the door. A shaky smile brought his haggard face to life all of a sudden and he lifted a hand in a half-wave.

Chloe almost fell through the door in her hurry to open it. The others piled in after her. Sam immediately put a finger to his lips and nodded to the chair beside his bed, in which Nate was slumped, his head resting on one arm in the deep sleep of fatigue.

Elena herded Cassie and Chloe forwards and lingered at the doorway with Sully to give them space in the small room. “Five minutes, okay?” she whispered to her daughter.

Cassie nodded, already climbing up onto the end of the bed.

“Hey, little boots,” Sam said, in an undertone.

The kid studied him uncertainly for a moment, her eyes taking in the tubes and the mechanical bed and the battered, wrung out look of her uncle. “Mom said I can’t hug you yet.”

Sam gave a wince as he tried to sit up some more. “Yeah, I’m still a little sore. But… I’ll tell you what. This arm doesn’t hurt-” he held out the hand that didn’t have a cannula in it. “You can hug that.”

Cassie pounced on his forearm and pinned it to the bed in a full body bear hug. Sam wrapped his other arm around her and leant down as far as he could without hissing in pain to rest his forehead against her back. “Good to see you, kiddo.”

“I brought you some stuff,” she said, bouncing up and almost knocking him on the chin with the top of her head. The rucksack was ceremoniously unpacked. Sam’s eyes lit up at the food, and he stashed the cookies under his blankets, telling tales of villainous nurses who only give out stale bread and water. He spread the map across his knees and got Cassie to show him her route, which apparently involved crossing oceans and scaling mountains to get to the hospital. The Egyptology book he accepted gratefully and placed on his bedside table. Then there was Cassie’s drawing. Sam pointed out each family member and made some constructive comments regarding the size of Sully’s moustache and the impressive amount of bandages on his own figure. Cassie attributed the addition of Vicky to Chloe, who nodded modestly.

“Smart lady,” Sam agreed. “Lucky to have her on our team, huh?”

His eyes caught Chloe’s for a moment, and he inclined his head in a little nod of thanks. “Fastest driver in town. Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”

“I can drive now, too,” Cassie informed him, then frowned. “But only in Sully’s car.”

Sam took this information in his stride. “Well, that’s good, because Sully is a terrible driver. Famous for it.”

Sully gave an indignant grunt from the door. Chloe was grateful for the joke. The stress of the last few hours was giving way to a shivery kind of exhaustion – the relief of seeing Sam conscious was about all that was keeping her upright.

“Oh, and I made one more thing for you!” Cassie remembered, wrenching open the front zip of the rucksack and passing over the folded-up list with a solemn reverence.

“What’s this?” Sam murmured, scanning it with a look of intense concentration that Chloe couldn’t help but compare with the expression Cassie had worn while she’d been writing it.

Sam’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down a few times and he had to clear his throat before he could speak again.

“This is… This is…” he tried, but couldn’t finish his thought. He squeezed Cassie into his side, ignoring the pain for a moment, before carefully folding the paper up again and holding it to his chest. “I’m gonna put this right… here.” He tucked it inside his gown, over his heart, and gave it a few pats for good measure. “Thanks, little boots.”

Cassie beamed and clambered off the bed, eager to inspect the unfamiliar room. Chloe shuffled up to take her place, perching on the side of the bed by Sam’s feet and patting his leg awkwardly. Their friendship had never been particularly touchy-feely but the urge to throw her arms around him – or possibly punch him for almost getting himself killed - was almost overwhelming.

Guilt lanced through her. She was the one who’d brought him on the job. She was the one who’d trusted the bastard, double-crossing contacts who’d stuck a knife in him. She was the one who'd put him in danger. She found it hard to look him in the face.

“How you feeling?” she asked. _Well that's a stupid question. He just got stabbed in the guts, moron._

He forced a smile. “Better than last night.”

There was an awkward silence. She was no good at this stuff. In lieu of an emotional outburst she slapped him on the arm.

“Hey,” she muttered. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too,” he grumbled, rubbing his arm. “Look, Chloe, I’m sorry-”

_Wait, **he’s** sorry?_

“What the hell are you talking about?” she snapped, a little angrier than she’d meant to.

He looked taken aback for a second. “I… In the meeting – they tried to re-negotiate. I kinda ran my mouth off…”

Realisation dawned. Sam was not the ideal candidate for diplomatic relations. She tried to imagine what his version of ‘running his mouth off’ was and it did not conjure up anything pretty.

He tilted his head to the side with a lopsided, abashed smile. “I might have… provoked them. Just a little. I should’ve called you the moment they tried to pull one over on us. Rookie mistake, walking straight out into an ambush.”

_Wonders never cease. Samuel Drake apologising for being a reckless arsehole. He must be on some heavy drugs right now._

Chloe’s mouth moved but no words came out. Sam laid his hand over hers and squeezed her knuckles gently. She shook her head and lunged for him, winding an arm around his neck, “You bloody idiot,” she whispered into his shoulder.

He chuckled softly before grunting at the tightness of her grip, “Hey, hey, okay, enough of the PDA, Christ.”

Chloe sat back, surreptitiously wiping her eyes, painfully aware of the audience behind her. A movement to her left made her turn and she saw Cassie creeping carefully into Nate’s lap.

“Wait, Cassie-” Elena began but it was too late. Nate jerked forward, almost tipping Cassie off his knees, before securing her with both arms, head turning from side to side in confusion and semi-panic, looking for a threat.

“Hi Daddy,” Cassie said, and Chloe watched Nate melt into the most heartfelt hug she’d ever seen as he curled his body around his daughter. He took in the rest of the room blearily. He looked a big, tired, grizzly bear; his hair a mess, his clothes wrinkled and his face covered in stubble.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” he croaked. “Sam, you’re awake!”

Sam cracked a half-smile. “Hey, little brother. You look like crap.”

“You okay? You need anything? How long-? Hey, _I_ look like crap? Lemme get you a mirror...”

Cassie furrowed her brow at her father and uncle. “You shouldn’t say ‘crap’.”

Nate stifled a grin. “Well… Right. But this is a special occasion, so...”

The little girl considered this for a moment then tried it on for size, at the top of her voice: “Crap!”

“Ohh boy, okay,” Elena cut in. “I think we should all leave Sam in peace for a little while, huh?”

They trailed out of the room in search of coffee, each of them promising to be right here when he woke up again. And just before the door closed, Chloe glanced back to see Sam pulling out Cassie’s list once more and turning it over and over in his hands, a profound look on his face.

#

Out in the corridor, Chloe felt Nate’s hand rest heavily on her shoulder. “Thanks for getting him out of there,” he said quietly. “And for looking after Cass. We owe you one.”

Chloe shrugged, uncomfortable at how grateful they all were. They should be furious with her, not thanking her. “It was my fault,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I should’ve-”

“Hey.” Nate stopped and turned her to face him, holding her by the upper arms. His weary eyes sought out hers, a look of perplexed concern on his face. “You couldn’t have known. And Sam… He attracts his own unique brand of trouble. I’m just glad you were there.”

She didn’t have the chance to respond because Cassie threaded her little hand into Chloe’s and tugged her down the corridor. “Mom said we can have donuts for lunch! Do you think Sam wants one with sprinkles or chocolate or rainbow frosting?”

Chloe let herself be pulled fowards, not sure if it was the adrenaline come-down or the sheer exhaustion or the prospect of sugar that was making her feel so high, but she couldn’t keep a smile off her face as Cassie skipped along beside her. “Ohhh I think… all of them, just to be safe.”

#

“Let’s see…” Sam mused, smoothing down his bucket list and rubbing his chin contemplatively. Cassie sat behind him on the back of the couch while Vicky snuffled beneath his legs and Chloe lounged in the armchair, flicking idly through the TV channels.

“ _Sleepover at Cassie’s house_ ,” he read, crossing out the wonky writing with a thick green marker pen. “Well, we can tick that one off right away. I’m gonna be staying here until I can stand up without cursing.”

“You can say ‘crap’, it’s a special occasion,” Cassie parroted. Sam raised his eyebrows and she giggled. “I can say it when Dad isn’t around, right?”

“Just don’t get me in trouble,” he whispered back.

Chloe snorted. “You do that well enough on your own.”

Sam ignored her, studying the phonetically spelled list with a confused expression. “And what’s this? _Fight a dolphin_?”

“ _Ride_ a dolphin,” Cassie corrected, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, right. Well, that one might be a little tricky with all these stitches. We’ll save it for later.”

Chloe leaned across to read over his shoulder. “What’s ‘catapult’?”

Sam and Cassie exchanged a secret little look and gave her matching smirks.

“Oh, okay, a little in-joke, huh?” Chloe asked, amused. “You know, the proper term is _trebuchet_.”

She smiled to herself this time. Nadine would be back from her trip to South Africa in a week, and as much as she loved hanging with the Drakes nothing compared to being _home_ – which just so happened to be wherever Nadine was. You couldn't exactly call it a traditional family, but she couldn't imagine a better one.

“ _Find a treasure_ ,” Sam read, stabbing at the paper with a resolute finger. “That’s the one. That’s next on the list. What shall we go hunting for?”

Cassie bounded off the couch and hauled out the box of maps once more, rabbiting away about ancient Egyptian tombs and pharaohs and mummies and pyramids. Sam watched her with a contented smile. Chloe leant back in her chair and let the white noise of the TV and Cassie’s excited adventuring plans wash over her. This babysitting lark wasn’t so bad after all. Not with a family like this.


	5. Like Father Like Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the times Cassie reminds Sully of her dad...

Cassie’s stubbornness was legendary. Worse than both her parents combined.

The first time she ran away she was four-years-old. It didn’t really count because her plan was to stow away on her parents’ boat, infuriated by the fact that they were daring to take a trip without her. After a brief tantrum that left Elena and Nate fighting amused smirks, she stomped off to the kitchen, climbed onto the counter, grabbed a packet of cookies from the cupboard and let herself out the back door.

“She means business,” Sully observed, as the three of them watched her storm down the beach to the jetty, followed by a bounding Vicky, barking with excitement at their clandestine adventure.

“You gonna be alright ‘til Sunday?” Nate asked, a sad little look in his eyes at the thought of leaving his daughter behind for the weekend.

Sully’s eyes creased in a smile and he patted the kid on the shoulder. “I’ve had worse babysitting duties,” he said. Half a lifetime of chasing the youngest Drake brother across the world bred the kind of tolerance and quick thinking that had kept Sully alive this long. “And I took the liberty of organising a little… activity for the two of us.”

“That sounds ominous,” Elena said.

“Does it involve rearranging the furniture?” Nate drawled, shooting him a well-worn side-eye.

Sully attempted a wounded look. “That den was a masterpiece.”

“She slept in there for a week!” Nate said, unable to stop himself from laughing. “We had to do hostage negotiation for the couch.”

“It was a pretty good den,” Elena admitted, under her breath.

Cassie had reached the boat and was now clambering over the side, assisted by the occasional nudge of Vicky’s nose.

“Okay, who’s going to go get her?” Elena sighed, idly double-checking their paperwork before they headed out on the reconnaissance job.

Sully tucked his hands into his pockets and shouldered open the door. “Well she’s mad as hell at the pair of you,” he said. “I’ll see if I can convince her.”

By the time he got to the jetty Cassie had settled herself under one of the boat’s rear benches and already started on her rations. As Sully approached he saw a little hand emerge and toss a few cookie crumbs over the side for Vicky, who lay whining on the wooden boards, unable to jump high enough to join her little friend.

Sully lowered himself down next to the dog with an old man sigh, as much to signal his presence to the girl as to ease the aching of his knees.

He heard the munching sounds from the boat quieten and stop. Then a little voice: “I’m not going back.”

“That’s a shame, kiddo. I had grand plans for this weekend and I’m not sure I can manage on my own,” Sully said, hamming up the disappointment.

A pause for thought.

“I guess I’ll just take Vicky,” he added, scratching the dog under the chin.

A wisp of blonde hair appeared over the edge of the bench. “Take her where?”

Sully leaned back onto his elbows. “Ohhh nowhere special. It’s probably nothing. It’s just… I recently came into the possession of a certain treasure map-”

In her eagerness, Cassie bumped her head on the bench as she sprang up out of her hiding place. She barely noticed, however, fixing her eyes on Sully in wonder. “A real one?”

“Of course a real one, who do you think I am?” Sully replied in a scandalised tone.

“Victor ‘goddamn’ Sullivan!” Cassie declared, in a perfect imitation of her uncle Sam.

Sully tried to keep his face straight, shaking his head. “It’s gonna cost you, though,” he said, nodding to the cookies packet in her hand.

Cassie looked down and seemed to consider the deal for a moment before handing him one reluctantly. “One now, one after we find the treasure,” she decided, firmly.

This time Sully couldn’t stop a barking laugh. “You drive a hard bargain, kiddo. But you’re on.”

*

The treasure hunt mostly involved chocolate coins that Sully had carefully hidden around the house and garden that morning. Cassie followed the clues he’d set out on a crudely-drawn map and hoarded her haul in a little Easter basket procured from her arts and craft cupboard, while Sully followed behind, his smile broadening at each squeaking discovery.

Later, as the stars came out and they sat together on the jetty, her cheeks smeared with chocolate, she pointed out it wasn’t _real_ treasure with a scathing look reminiscent of her mother whenever Nate put forward a proposal for his next wild goose chase.

“Well,” Sully chuckled, “If you want me to take ‘em back…”

Cassie tightened her grip on the basket in horror, but reached in and took out a single coin, passing it over to him with a somber expression.

_One now, one after we find the treasure._

Sully nodded his thanks. “Good business ethics, kiddo. You’re gonna go far.”

Just like her father. Nate would stick his heels in like a goddamn mule but when it came down to it, he’d always do the right thing. It was just one of the reasons Sully loved his idiotic, danger-magnet, wayward son – Nate was, and had always been, a better man than him. He made people better. He brought it out of you whether you liked it or not.

Cassie seemed to understand the sentiment, if not the actual words, and grinned contentedly, snuggling up his lap. Sully wrapped a blanket around them both and her little head thudded back against his chest as she tilted her face up to stare at the diamond-studded sky.

“You know there’s a constellation with the same name as you?” Sully told her.

Cassie’s eyes widened. He took her hand and aimed her pointer finger at a set of five stars in a ‘W’ formation. “Well. Sort of. Right… there. _Cassiopeia_. She was a queen.” He left out the part about her vanity – Cassie would never think that way – but the stubbornness was familiar. “She was… confident. Brave. Maybe got a little too big for her boots,” he said instead, “Started a fight with Poseidon, god of the sea.”

 _Not a patch on Cassie_ , he thought, _If the kid wanted to battle the sea she’d goddamn win_.

“So she ended up there, in the sky. You can use her to find North. And the Andromeda galaxy. She gives off a lot of radio signals, too. Still talking, after all this time…”

He knew he was rambling and the child wouldn’t probably know or even care what the hell he was talking about, but ever since she was a baby she'd always loved to hear his rumbling deep voice through his chest. There were times when he’d been the only one to be able to get her to sleep, telling her censored versions of his Navy stories long into the night. It reminded him of all the times he'd told Nate the same stories. So many times over the kid could quote them better than Sully. And there had been countless times when he and Nate had stared up at these same stars, too. Perfect quiet moments, just like this. Just the two of them.

“Maybe they’ll name a star after you, too, one day,” he murmured.

When he looked down again she was fast asleep, breathing steadily, eyelashes impossibly long, soft head tucked into the crook of his arm. Time seemed to stop for a moment, as it often did when he looked at the kid, as if it was giving him the chance to bottle the memory up forever.

She’d remember it, too, years later, on another night just like this as they gazed up at the sky together. “Cassiopeia,” she’d recite with a secret smile just for Sully, “The queen who fought the ocean.”

And he'd return the smile with a twinkle in his eye. “Ain’t got nothing on you, kiddo.”

 

#

 

Cassie ran ahead along the beach as Sully strolled behind, an unlit cigar ticked into the side of his mouth. A recent growth-spurt gave the nine-year-old an extra spurt of speed but she was turning gangly and hadn’t quite got used to her new height, stumbling and tripping over her own feet occasionally, as if she was surprised at how fast she could go now. Nate had been the same when he was young – hell, he was still a clumsy sonofabitch at times, overestimating his abilities and pushing himself to his limits. All or nothing; it had always been the same with Nate, ever since the first moment Sully had laid eyes on him. Luckily, Nate leaned towards the ‘all’ when it came to love and friendship, and he’d been rewarded for it with a wife he probably didn’t quite deserve and a child who had all the makings of a goddamn genius and was likely going to surpass both her parents’ achievements.

Sully watched his granddaughter (all pretence of him not being an ‘official’ relation had long since been abandoned) with glowing affection as she waded into the shallows, scooping up handfuls of damp sand and throwing them overarm into the waves. He wished he’d known Nate when he was this young; wished the kid had had a better childhood in general. Sully had never really thought seriously about having children, never saw the point in passing on his own shitty upbringing and his own bad habits, but when Nate shoehorned his way into his life he realised just what he’d been missing. Moments like this, when life required nothing more from you than to contemplate the unconditional nature of wanting another person to experience eternal, uncomplicated happiness.

But, of course, things didn’t always happen that way.

Cassie’s sudden shriek made him flinch. She hopped for a moment before toppling backwards into the surf clutching her left foot, choking on the wave that crashed over her. Sully was there in seconds and she clung to him as he helped her back to her feet – or foot – she couldn’t put pressure on her left one, and a trail of blood had already begun to seep into the water.

She thumped herself down onto the sand with an angry hiss.

“Let me see,” Sully said, gently lifting her foot to inspect a long, clean cut along the sole of her foot.

“Trod on a shell,” she explained through gritted teeth.

Cassie was not a complainer, as a general rule. She’d always been a stoic little thing, even as a toddler. Sully remembered the time he’d been babysitting and she’d caught some stomach bug and ended up projectile vomiting all over her bed at two in the morning. She was only three but she’d tried to clean it up herself and he’d found her climbing the airing cupboard shelves to get a fresh set of sheets. Or the time she was six and tried to jump from her treehouse to the garage roof and fractured her collar bone. She’d been the one consoling her father all the way to the hospital.

And then there was the time she’d almost given Sully a full-blown heart attack. It was only last year, but he still remembered the cold feeling of terror as if it had been yesterday. She’d been swimming around the jetty with Vicky, confusing the dog by diving underneath her and popping up the other side. Sully watched them from the beach, nursing a beer, basking in the afternoon sunshine.

If she hadn’t shouted, he might not have even realised until it was too late. She’d been overexcited, wanting to show him a crab she’d found under the pier: “Sully! Look at this!” but she’d come up too fast, smashing her head against the underside of the jetty and knocking herself dizzy.

Sully had looked up just to see her sink below the water, Vicky barking wildly, and he knew something was wrong. It seemed to take forever for him to reach the jetty, even at a sprint, expecting to see her head bob back up, grinning - for it all to have been a joke. But she didn't come back up. The water remained unbroken and there was no sign of her.

He leapt in, the sound of his own heart beating filling his ears as the water closed up over his head. The salt stung his eyes as he scanned the shadows below the pier. It wasn’t deep but she’d already floated to the bottom, half-senseless, limbs stretched out limply, hair waving in the current like weeds. He forced himself through the water, wrapped an arm around her middle and pushed himself off the sand, lungs bursting with panic.

She started spluttering the moment they broke the surface. A tiny thread of blood trickled out of her hairline. Sully gulped in a breath and immediately let it out again in a sob of relief. He hauled her out of the water and back onto dry land, feeling a hundred years old and twice as tired, collapsing onto the sand with Cassie in his arms.

Her arms were still tight around his neck and she didn’t seem to want to let go. He didn't want her to, either. He could feel the hotness of her tears mingling with the cool seawater on his neck and the shaking of her shoulders but she made no noise. Any other kid would be wailing like a pre-schooler but she damped it down, calmed her breathing and gradually forced her body to stop shivering. Sully rubbed firm circles into her back, holding her tight. _You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay._

Vicky had followed them out and was running a frantic loop around them both, kicking up sand and splashing them with every wag of her tail. Cassie reached out and grabbed the dog by her collar, pulling her into the group hug, burying her face in the damp fur.

“You scared the hell out of us,” Sully whispered, giving the dog a hefty pat on the flank in solidarity.

Cassie looked up with a wide-eyed sheepish expression. “Sorry, Sully.”

He shook his head, “Jesus, you don’t need to be sorry. Just…”

_I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you._

He’d been through enough of those moments with her father. Every time he watched Nate climb another rickety ruin, every time they were up against insurmountable odds, every time the kid would grin and say he'd be back before Sully knew it... Time and time again, thinking: _this is the one he doesn’t come back from_. Shot in the guts by that asshole Flynn. Drugged and kidnapped by that bitch Marlowe. Falling out of a goddamn plane in the middle of the desert. Half-drowned at the bottom of a cliff in Libertalia. Too many near misses. And every time, he’d brush it off like it was nothing. Broken bones, concussions, gunshots, it didn’t matter. So long as he had a treasure to find or a mission to complete or some crazy lunatic to stop or a world to save, the kid simply buried down his pain and carried on.

Nate might have spent the majority of his life believing he was immortal – or simply not caring if he wasn’t – but Sully had spent their time together sprouting grey hair after grey hair and losing years of sleep worrying about the idiot kid. He was glad those days were over now. He just hoped Cassie wouldn’t follow too far in her father’s footsteps.

Back on the beach, he watched the nine-year-old poke at the slice in her foot, more curious than upset. Shuffling like a crab, she made her way back down to the shoreline, dipped her foot into the water with a wince, and started fishing around with her hands at her sides.

“What’re you…?” Sully began, but she held up one arm triumphantly and crawled back to him, dropping a curved black rectangle on the sand.

“This is what did it. Razor clam,” she said, pointing at the sharp edge with a grim smile. “Clue’s in the name, I guess.”

Sully picked up the shell with a chuckle. _Kid’s more interested in what cut her than moaning about the injury itself. She’ll probably go draw a picture of it in her journal later, too._

“C’mon, let’s get you patched up,” he said, letting her lean on him as she hopped her way back up to the house.

He knew, deep down, he didn’t need to worry so much. Because he wasn’t the only one looking out for her. It wasn't the same as it was with Nate, with the weight of the world on Sully's shoulders alone. Cassie had a whole family to keep her out of trouble – or, if he knew the kid at all, to yank her out of trouble when she inevitably found her way into it... Yep, just like her father. At least she she shared another trait with Nate - she was a tough little cookie, that was for sure.

 

#

 

Sully watched Cassie sketch, her brow furrowed in concentration, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth – just one of the many tiny, innocuous habits she shared with Nate that made Sully’s chest tighten with affection.

She had her father’s artistic talent but a style totally her own. Nate took the broad view, scribbling down an image almost as fast as he could take it in – rough around the edges, with a focus on character rather than accuracy, giving a general sense rather than specifics. Cassie, in contrast, favoured details over the whole – her sketchbooks were full of disembodied parts: an eye in macro, a single leaf, the curled fingers of a sculpture, the angle of a shadow as it fell across the floor.

He observed her in silence; there were a lot of comfortable silences between the two of them. Cassie didn’t share her father’s motor-mouth or her mother’s journalistic habit of cross-questioning every comment; she thought about her words before she spoke them, and could say more with a brief glance than a whole conversation. But when she drew – that’s when he saw the fifteen-year-old Nate resurrected, hunched over his notebook in clothes that always looked too big on him, biting gently on his lower lip as his pencil scratched over the paper.

The kid had always had his journal close at hand, tucked into his back pocket so that it wore away an outline in the denim. Sully couldn't count the times he'd lost track of Nate only to find him immersed in his drawing – sketching artefacts, connecting dots between hypotheses, noting down historical details, or drawing unflattering caricatures of Sully himself. He got through a journal a month during that first year together, always looking for the next flash of inspiration.

It was how he processed things. The terrifying mutant creatures they found in El Dorado he'd renamed ‘slippery naked guys’. The Shambhala guardians became ‘demon sasquatches’. Trauma and near-death experiences reduced to cartoons. And yet there was beauty, too. Things no one else on this earth would ever see. Lost cities and civilisations and centuries-old artefacts lost to history.

But all that paled in comparison the moment Cassie was born.

Nate never stopped sketching his daughter. He probably had more drawings than photos. Every nap, every milestone, every possible moment he could capture. Cassie sleeping. Cassie crawling. Cassie reading. Cassie eating. Cassie cuddling Vicky. Cassie’s chubby toddler wrists. Cassie’s little cherub cheeks. Cassie’s hands, clutching her own pencil, drawing next to her dad, like mirror images of one another.

Nate had got better and better over the years but Cassie was already in danger of overtaking him. She’d already won a few art prizes at high school. She had a gift for zoning in on whatever it was that made a sketch _real_. You could see the moment she figured it out, too – her hand started moving with sudden purpose and her eyes focused to a point. She was doing it now, pressing her lips together in fierce concentration. And, when Sully peered over her shoulder to see what it was she was drawing, his heart grew a few sizes in the space of a second.

She glanced up at him with a brief smile. “Sit back down, I’m not finished.”

“You could have said you were drawing me,” he grumbled good-naturedly, “I’d have picked a more dashing pose.”

“No…” she said, barely taking her eyes off her work, in which an image of Sully was looking into the distance, eyes thoughtful, lips pursed, “This is _you_.”

He had to admit she was right. Sure, he had a few more wrinkles than he’d like to admit, and he was looking kind of stern in the sketch – perhaps that was just his thinking face – but there was something about the drawing that looked more like him than any photo.

Cassie frowned suddenly, tapping her pencil against her teeth. “Something’s not quite right though…”

Sully glanced back over in surprise and she gave a little gasp of epiphany. “Do that again!”

“What?” he asked, confused.

“That’s it. Eyebrows!” she said, grinning broadly and returning to her work with renewed gusto.

Sully laughed. A long-forgotten memory came bobbing to the surface of his mind. One of Nate’s journals – from Nepal, if he remembered correctly – in which the kid had stuck a set of Sully’s passport photos, defacing each one with a different set of expressive eyebrows and its accompanying emotion, from ‘anger’ to ‘arousal’.

He watched Cassie correct her sketch with that same furtive look of her father's. He figured there were worse things in the world than being a muse for a Drake. Except Sully vastly preferred this portrait.

“You got it, kiddo,” he said. “It’s all in the eyebrows.”

 

#

 

Cassie didn’t often argue with her parents. At least not about anything serious. Sure, they bickered and bantered and wound each other up, but that was just about normal for the Drake-Fisher household – especially now there was a teenage Cassie to contend with.

But this was not the usual difference of opinion. Sully could hear the raised voices before he’d even reached the door, and he let himself in quietly, shocked to hear Cassie so distressed and Nate so angry.

“-you’re not even listening to me, Dad!”

“Oh I’m listening, I’m just saying ‘no’.”

“Just because he’s a boy!”

“Yes, because he’s a boy. And you’re my daughter. And I happen to know exactly what sixteen-year-old boys are like.”

Sully followed the voices to the kitchen where the pair of them were standing a few feet apart, yelling in each other’s faces.

“Oh my god, Dad, give me some credit. Stop being such a-”

“A what? A concerned parent?”

“Come _on_ , Mom already said she was cool with it!”

“Uh, yeah, before you casually mentioned it would be an overnight trip with this… this… what’s his name again?”

“Angelo.”

“Angelo,” Nate repeated with a sneer. “No. No way.”

Neither of them had noticed Sully yet. He cleared his throat emphatically and they both turned to him in surprise, speaking over one another in a hurry.

“Sully, back me up here-”

“Sully, make him listen!”

“Woah, woah. What the hell is this all about?” Sully said, taking a seat at the counter to act as mediator. “You first,” he pointed at Cassie. “And you,” he pointed at Nate, “Shut up for a minute.”

Cassie flashed a snarky smirk at her father before taking a deep breath and letting it out in one stream of consciousness splurge:

“So you know I won that research scholarship, right? Well part of it is going up to New York to spend a few days working with archivists in the Historical Society Museum but Mom and Dad are gonna be on a trip that weekend and my friend Angelo’s family is from New York and they’ve offered to let me stay with them-”

Nate made silent air quotes around the word ‘friend’. Cassie glared at him.

“So what’s the problem?” Sully said.

Nate squared his shoulders and started counting on his fingers. “One, when she first pitched it to us she failed to mention this ‘friend’ was a boy. Two, his family aren’t even going to be there – they’re away too. Three, _she’s sixteen_...”

Sully considered them both with a shrewd eye. “Might I remind you what you were doing at the same age?” he asked Nate.

“That’s _different_.”

“Yeah, you were breaking and entering museums instead…” Cassie muttered.

“I’m talking about the _boy_ issue here,” Nate said with a desperate wail.

“Oh _god_ , Dad… We’re just friends.”

“Does _he_ know that? I’ve met the kid, I’ve seen how he looks at you. And he’s... He's an idiot.”

“So were you at that age,” Sully cut in.

“EXACTLY! All sixteen year-old-boys are idiots.”

“But Cassie isn’t,” Sully said levelly. “Not even close to an idiot. Despite her unfortunate genes,” he added, nodding at Nate. Cassie sniggered.

“Plus, from what I hear, you were never any good at getting the girls,” she teased. “Or at least keeping them.”

Nate paused mid response, one pointing finger hanging in the air, mouth open. “I- That… That is conjecture.”

“Have you ever seen Cassie do anything she didn’t want to do?” Sully asked, ignoring Nate’s outrage.

“Well…”

“Well?”

“I mean-”

Cassie laid a hand on her father’s arm and his argument deflated. “Dad… It’s fine. We’re going to be studying most of the time,” she said.

Then, unable to keep a twisted little smile off her face, “I mean, there’s hardly gonna be any time for fooling around anyway…”

Sully cackled, his head thrown back, as Cassie walked past her thunderstruck father and disappeared into her room.

When Nate recovered his voice he sounded like a husk of a man, “Why didn’t you warn me about the teenage years?” he asked Sully desperately.

Sully slapped him on the back. “Because no matter how bad it gets, she’ll _never_ be as bad as you.”

“Well, thanks. That’s a consolation.”

“Any time, kid. Any time.”

Nate rubbed at his stubble thoughtfully, looking down the hall at Cassie’s closed door. “I just lost that argument, didn’t I?”

“Yup. Surprised you even tried.”

Nate sighed, his wry smile fading into a furrowed anxiety. “So... When do you stop worrying about them?” he said quietly.

Sully threw an arm around his shoulder. “In my experience? Never. But after a while you learn to let ‘em go. Let ‘em go make their own mistakes, so long as they know you’ll always be there to pick up the pieces.”

“Huh,” Nate said with a shrug, looking sideways at his old partner self-consciously. “Y’know… Sometimes I wondered if I’d gone too far. If there’d be a time you wouldn’t put up with my shit anymore.”

Sully hissed in a breath, “Yeah, well, you came close, kid. Real close.”

Nate gave an apologetic smile. “Right. Sorry.”

Sully squeezed his shoulder. “Look. It's Cassie. She’s gonna be fine.”

“She’s gonna be fine,” Nate echoed. “And now I know why you always had a glass of whiskey in your hand whenever I came home.”

Sully let out a barking laugh. “Might as well start now, huh?”

“Now _that_ is a plan, old man.”

“Less of the old… You’re not such a young buck yourself, you know,” Sully said, giving him a warning look.

Nate smirked, pouring out two generous drinks and passing one to Sully.

“To age and wisdom and pretending we don’t know what our teenagers are doing with boys,” Nate toasted.

“To surviving long enough to have teenagers in the first place,” Sully replied, clinking his glass against Nate’s.

“Amen to that.”

There was a pregnant pause as they drank, before a “humph” from the doorway broke them out of their thoughts. Cassie stood there, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. She mocked her father’s list-making and counted her fingers:

“One, I just called Mom and she said you’re being an overprotective moron. Two, you’re calling _me_ irresponsible and you’re the one drinking hard liquor at two in the afternoon? Three… um. Can I have twenty bucks to go into town? Please?”

Nate and Sully exchanged a look. “She’s gonna be fine,” they said in unison, heading out on to the deck to finish their drinks.

“Uhhh, hello?” Cassie called after them. “So… is that a yes to the twenty bucks? Dad? Sully? I’ll… I’ll just take it out of your wallet then, okay? Alright. Good. Fine. Love you!”

She sniggered quietly as two matching responses of "Love you, too," came grumbling back from the deck.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah I've had bits and pieces of this planned out for ages but didn't realise it was gonna get so long! There's just so much between Sully and Cassie and Nate to explore... I probably didn't even scratch the surface, but before this turns into a novel here it is. Enjoy!


	6. Kidzilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutter pulled out his phone and texted Chloe: _This babysitting lark is easy._
> 
>  _Famous last words_ , she replied.
> 
>  
> 
> **In which Cutter takes Cassie to soft play...**

“Are you sure about this?” Nate asked as he passed over Cassie’s little backpack, filled with snacks and toys and colouring pencils.

“Yeah, yeah, no problem mate,” Cutter said, with a dismissive wave. “You like dinosaurs, don’t you, Cass?” he asked the five-year-old running circle-of-eights around their legs.

Cassie stopped, considered the question, nodded somberly, and continued her dizzying journey.

“Natural History Museum it is, then,” Cutter smiled.

Nate scooped up his daughter and nuzzled a kiss into her cheek, amid squealing complaints about the tickliness of his stubble. “Be good for Uncle Charlie okay kiddo?” 

“So where’re you meeting this researcher then? You know where you’re going?” Cutter asked Nate, as Cassie squirmed free and hid behind Charlie’s legs.

Nate squinted at the London tube map in his hand. “Sure. Westbound District Line to… Chiswick.”

Cutter stifled a laugh. “That’s ‘ _chizzik_ ’, mate. Not chiz-wick.” He shook his head, “Such a tourist…”

Nate shot him a look. “ _Chizzik._ Right. Anything else I should know about your fair city?”

Cutter grinned more broadly. “Keep to the right on the escalator. Don’t make eye contact on the tube. And it’s probably gonna rain later.”

“Of course it is,” Nate muttered, leaning down to give his daughter one last hug. “Have fun. I’ll see you later.” He straightened up and slapped Cutter on the arm. “And thanks. Appreciate it, Charlie. Hope she’s not too much trouble.”

Cutter smiled down at the kid, who had already broken into her snack supply. “This one? Never.”

***

The line for the Natural History Museum wound all the way around the block but luckily Cutter happened to know one of the archivists and got them a queue-jumping fast-pass to the staff entrance. He’d planned on giving the kid a leisurely tour and making use of his historical knowledge to entertain and educate her, but Cassie had other ideas – namely running like a demon through each exhibit and giving him several heart attacks whenever he lost sight of her. The animatronic T-rex made her cry, she tried to climb the triceratops skeleton, and by the time they made it out of there Cutter’s nerves were shredded.

 _Wide open space, that’s what she needs_ , he told himself, taking a firm grip of her little hand and leading them up the street to Hyde Park. _Grass and stuff._

But when they reached the park the forecasted rain began to pour and Cassie theatrically face-planted onto a bench, refusing to move another step. “Charliiiiie. I’m hungry,” she whined, the contents of her rucksack having long been devoured.

Cutter stifled a sigh and checked his watch surreptitiously, doing a double-take in shock. _HOW HAS IT ONLY BEEN A BLOODY HOUR?!_ Nate wouldn’t be finished ‘til four and it wasn’t even midday.

He scanned the grey horizon for a ray of hope and fixed his gaze on a nearby café. “Alright. We can do this,” he murmured. 

One soggy piggy-back later, they were settled in the café, Cutter with the largest coffee they could make him and Cassie with the largest piece of cake they had. For a moment, all was calm as the kid busied herself scribbling in her notebook with her crayons, and Cutter took the opportunity to make an emergency call to Chloe.

“Out of your depth already?” she answered, a smirk in her voice.

“No… but it’s pissing it down and… Look, I just need a few ideas on how to keep her occupied, that’s all.”

“You’re in _London_ , Cutter.”

“I know, I know, but I _live_ here,” he sighed. “I don’t usually do the touristy stuff. And she’d rather climb a tree than go and look at Buckingham Palace.”

Chloe laughed. “Her father’s daughter…”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“Well, what about soft play?”

Cutter made a face. “What the hell is ‘soft play’ when it’s at home?”

He could almost hear Chloe’s eyes rolling. “You know: ball pits, bouncy castles, slides and assault courses, that kind of stuff. It’s basically a giant cage for hyperactive children. She’ll love it.”

Cutter was already Googling for nearby options. “There’s one called… Kidzilla Zone?!”

“Sounds about right." 

“Sounds like a bloody nightmare.”

“Yup. Have fun!”

Chloe rang off with a laugh and Cutter turned back to Cassie, who was scooping the foam off his cappuccino with her spoon. She looked up at him with a classic Drake grin. 

Cutter sighed. “Alright Kidzilla, let’s go find you a cage.”

***

Chloe hadn’t warned him about how LOUD it was going to be. Or how feral small children were. Two minutes in the door and he’d already lost Cassie, who’d headed straight for a gigantic labyrinth surrounded by netting that stretched up to the ceiling. Kidzilla Zone was essentially a massive warehouse filled with brightly coloured foam stairs, platforms, rollers, swinging sandbags, slides and ball pits.

It was almost impossible to keep track of Cassie as she darted around the maze, and the sensory bombardment of screaming kids, yelling parents and tinny pop music only compounded Cutter’s confusion. He stood at the base of a slide and peered anxiously up through the netting. This was a mistake. It was like Battle Royale in there. He dreaded to think what Nate would do if he brought Cassie back with a broken arm or a black eye…

“First time?” said a voice. Cutter turned, startled. A woman with a baby on her hip was staring at him in amusement.

“Er, yeah. That obvious, huh?” he said, fidgeting in embarrassment.

The woman shrugged. “It’s a bit of a free-for-all, but they generally come and find you when they’re hurt. Or hungry. Might as well make the most of it,” she said, gesturing to the chairs and tables nearby, and settled down to feed her baby.

She wasn’t wrong. A few minutes later, Cassie came tearing up to him, face flushed red with exertion, eyes sparkling with adrenaline. “Charlie! Charlie! I went right up to the top! And down the big slide! And a boy tried to sit on me in the ball pit but I hit him and he ran away!”

Cutter took a moment to process her high-speed tirade. “Oh. Uhh. Are you alright? I mean, you shouldn’t hit people, but-”

Aaand she was off again, little blonde ponytail bouncing behind her. When Cutter looked over at the woman with the baby she was sniggering into her tea.

Cutter tried to relax. _She’s okay. She can take care of herself. She’s a frickin’ Drake._

Cassie checked in with him periodically, and he’d occasionally catch a fleeting sight of her yellow t-shirt as she clambered through the labyrinth. An hour passed and he was actually kind of bored. He wished he’d brought a book.

He pulled out his phone and texted Chloe instead: _This babysitting lark is easy._

 _Famous last words_ , she replied.

“Uh… Isn’t that your daughter?” the woman with the baby said, an edge of concern in her voice.

Cutter looked up in alarm and the woman pointed to the very top of the climbing frame where a little figure in a yellow shirt was clinging to the netting, one leg stuck between two platforms, wailing at the top of her voice. Well and truly stuck.

He jolted to his feet, sending his chair skittering backwards. “She’s not my- I’m her- Oh bloody hell, Cassie, hang on, I’m coming!”

***

The maze was _a lot_ narrower than it looked from the outside and Cutter felt like a giant next to the little kids squeezing past him like a pack of rabid monkeys.

Despite the multi-coloured décor, inside the labyrinth it was dark and musty, and the twists and turns grew increasingly tight as he made his way up, hoping he was still heading in the right direction. He could already feel himself sweating at the pressure of the confined space, while Cassie’s high-pitched crying pierced through his eardrums and sent him into fight or flight mode.

 _Oh no no no no.Gotta get out, gotta get out, gotta get out._  

“Charliiiiiiiiie!”

He gritted his teeth and let out a long, slow breath. Claustrophobic or not, he was not about to let a kids’ assault course defeat him. With a grunt of effort he forced his way through a pair of vertical foam rollers and found himself on a precarious netting bridge. A series of punching bags printed with pirate faces hung from the ceiling, swinging ominously from side to side.

“Oh for Christ’s sake…”

He made his wobbling way across the bridge, buffeted from all sides by the stupid, grinning pirates. A train of raucous, giggling children followed behind him, dissolving into shrieking laughter whenever his foot slipped through the net and he let out a stream of increasingly profane curses.

“Charlie! I’m stuck!”

His head snapped up. Cassie was within sight, behind another netting screen, with no obvious way to get to her. She’d thankfully stopped crying but was still sniffling, her left thigh pinned between two padded platforms.

Cutter knocked the last pirate aside with a mammoth right hook. The punch bag snapped off its strap to a chorus of impressed ‘oooooohs’ from his young audience.

His eyes darted about for a path around the netting that divided him from Cassie. 

“How the hell did you get in there?” he asked her, unable to figure out a way through the maze.

She pointed towards a long, narrow tunnel, barely three feet across. A trickle of fear slithered down his spine.

“Bollocks.”

_You can do this, Cutter. You can do this. Breathe. Breathe. It’s just bloody soft play. Cassie’s in trouble. You can do this…_

He stuck a hand through the netting and could just about reach the little girl to pat her on the shoulder. “Hang on, sweetheart, I’m gonna get you out,” he said. 

She looked up at him with wide, tear-brimmed eyes. “Thanks, Charlie,” she said in a little wavering voice, and his heart melted a little bit.

With one last squeeze of her shoulder, he set off towards the tunnel, forcing down the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

_Pull yourself together, you stupid plonker. You can fit through there, just get your shoulders in and wriggle a bit and-_

_Oh. Shit._

His breath came out in stuttering gasps. He’d managed to jam his upper body into the tunnel, arms stretched out in front of him, but the breadth of his shoulders was making moving forward seriously difficult. His lower half still stuck out the end of the tunnel and he yelped involuntarily when he felt a series of small objects bounce off the backs of his legs.

“What the-?”

Malicious giggling came from behind him and he let his forehead drop to the tunnel floor with a thunk as a crowd of kids bombarded him with multicoloured balls from the ball pit. He felt the last vestiges of his dignity die a sad little death and visions of the fire department cutting him out of the tunnel with a giant claw flashed through his brain...  

“Uncle Charlie?” Cassie’s small voice came echoing through the tunnel.

He shook the despair out of his head and tried to focus on the end of the tunnel.  _Come on, Cutter. You've been in worse spots. Be a bloody hero for once._

"I'm coming, Cassie!" he yelled. He hauled himself painstakingly forward with his fingertips and was rewarded with a squealing, squeaking sound as he slid painfully through the tunnel, inch by inch.

“Almost there, just hang on…”

Sweat dripped into his eyes and he blinked it away. It seemed as if the tunnel was getting _smaller_ the further he crawled. Panic gripped at his chest. His vision had narrowed to a point, black at the edges, and he could hear his heart thudding in his ears.

_Oh God... Gotta get out. Gotta get out…_

And then, suddenly, the world opened up again. He stretched until his fingers curled around the end of the tunnel and pulled with all his might, tumbling out of the tunnel in a heap. Cassie was a few feet away, still resolutely stuck, and he crawled over to her, muttering comforting words as the adrenaline peeled off him. She wrapped her little arms around his neck and he pried gently at the edges of the platform until she could wriggle her leg free, scuttling into his lap and sniffling into his shoulder. He checked her over for bruises but aside from a red mark above her knee she seemed to be fine.

“You okay?” he asked.

She wiped her nose on the shoulder of her t-shirt and hiccupped the last of her tears away, looking up at him with watery eyes.

“I’m hungry,” she said, and a laugh came booming out of Cutter’s chest, startling her for a moment before she joined in with a giggle.

“Alright,” he said, “But first show me this big slide. We’ll go down together.”

Cassie bounded to her feet, grabbing his hand and pulling him – bent double under the low ceiling – towards the Big Slide.

***

Nate was late. He’d got lost – twice – and then there were delays on the tube, and it was gone six before he turned up at the address Cutter had texted him.

Once they’d finally escaped Kidzilla Zone, Charlie had given up trying to find a child-appropriate space and opted for familiar territory instead:

_The pub._

The rain was still thundering down when Nate burst through the door, soaked to the skin, with the grim expression of a seasoned London commuter. He took in the scene before him, blinking slowly. Cassie was standing on the pool table, waving a cue in the air triumphantly. She was surrounded by a small cheering crowd, all raising their drinks to the little girl as she took a bow.

“Daddy!” Cassie cried as she caught sight of him. “I did a trick shot!”

“That’s… great, kiddo,” Nate said uncertainly, moving through the tangle of people, looking for Cutter.

Someone nudged his shoulder and a pint of beer appeared in front of him. “Here you go, mate,” Charlie said, “Looks like you need it.”

Nate nodded gratefully and watched as his daughter dutifully followed the instructions of a burly young man who helped her set up the pool balls in an elaborate pattern.

“Friends of yours?” Nate asked Cutter, eyeing the array of rough-looking locals. There were more scars and tattoos and concealed weapons than Nate cared to count, but they were all being extremely sweet and patient with Cassie, helping her to aim the cue and hold it steady, and breaking into rapturous applause whenever she hit the ball.

“Yeah…” Charlie said, “Just some old… associates from the inside.”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “I’m not gonna ask.”

“Yeah, best not, mate.”

"Charlie gave me some Guinness!" Cassie announced, as her father came over to ruffle her hair. Nate shot Cutter another side-eye.

Cutter shrugged sheepishly, "Just a taste. It's full of vitamins you know."

Nate sank down onto a bar stool with an exhausted sigh. "D'you know what? I'm just glad to be out of that goddamn rat race you call a city. Screw 'chizzik' and screw the underground and screw your stupid weather..."

A few of the locals were staring at him in a distinctly disapproving British manner, with an extra threat of criminal violence on the side. 

Nate let out a stuttering laugh. "No offence."

Cutter slapped him on the shoulder. "Meeting went well then?"

"Oh sure. Researcher seems like a real stand up guy. Not at all the type to stab me in the back the moment I'm not looking..." Nate drawled. "You know, the usual."

Cutter nodded sombrely. "Well, if you need any back-up..."

"Thanks, but you've done enough, looking after Cassie all day. How was it, by the way?"

The sound of pool balls cracking against one another made them both look up, and the crowd burst into laughter as Cassie did a celebratory dance on the table before sticking her arm into one of the corner holes, all the way up to her armpit. Cutter bolted over to her, gently pulled her arm free, and set her back on her feet. "Let's not get anything else stuck today, huh?" he muttered.

She sniggered conspiratorially and put a finger to her lips, "Don't tell dad about Kidzilla," she stage-whispered, repeating the pleading request he'd been muttering all afternoon.

Nate's eyebrows were raised questioningly when Cutter turned back. "So... Get into any trouble with the littlest Drake?" Nate asked with a smirk.

"What, Cassie? Nooo." Cutter squared his shoulders and tried to look nonchalant. "Easy as pie. Good as gold. No problem at all."

"Well... that's good to hear," Nate said slowly. "'Cause we're sticking around for a few days, so if you're free again tomorrow-"

"Uh, actually, I think I'm busy for the rest of the week," Cutter said quickly, "You know how it is. Business. Business things. And stuff."

Nate's lips twisted with a sly smile. "Sure, sure, I understand. Chloe said you had your hands full..."

Cutter's face paled. "You... uh, you spoke to Chloe?"

Nate couldn't hold in his laughter any more, mimicking Cutter's voice with a terrible accent, " _This babysitting lark is easy_ , huh?" 

Cutter spluttered for a moment, then pointed a finger at his friend, about to give him a piece of his mind but a familiar little voice came sailing over the noise of the crowd:

"Charliiiiiie!"

Cutter turned to see the kid right back where she was a minute before, her arm shoved all the way into the corner pocket.

“Charlie, I’m stuck!”

”Give me strength...” he murmured as he hurried back to free her, but just as he reached the pool table she leapt back up to her feet and struck a grinning ‘ta da!’ pose.

”Just kidding!”

Charlie swept her up into a merciless tickling bear hug and she squealed with glee.

”You little monster...” he growled, depositing her onto his shoulders with a humph.

Breathless with giggles, she gave his head an affectionate squeeze.

"Charlie's my hero," she told her daddy proudly.

"Is that right?" Nate said with an amused smile on his face.

"Charlie to the rescue!" Cassie cried, one fist thrust in the air.

Cutter blushed furiously for a moment, then spun the little girl round until she squealed even louder. "And you..." he said, "Are  _just_ like your dad."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Errrr. It's only been SIX MONTHS since I updated but this one's been sitting in my drafts for a long long time. I'm sorrryyyy. Life got in the way but I'm hoping to update more often in the new year...


End file.
